Top stories concerning British Isles ancestral research from Irish born Scottish based professional family historian, author and tutor Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit British GENES if you do so. Should you wish to get in touch, contact me at christopherpaton @ tiscali.co.uk. Happy hunting!

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Monday, 26 September 2011

Channel Islands Community Archive plea

Gillian Mawson has asked me to help with an appeal to raise votes to secure funding for the creation of a Channel Islands Community Archive via Natwest's new CommunityForce scheme which offers grants of up to £6000. Several charities and schemes have applied, and a vote to help decide the recepients opens today. Successful recipients will receive their award on December 31st.

Here are the details of the application:

Community Archive for Channel Island Evacuation

It brings together WW2 evacuees from Guernsey who came to England in June 1940 and who remained here after 1945. They share often traumatic wartime memories, create friendships, learn new skills, increase confidence and share/preserve their stories

What does your charity/project do?

The evacuees meet to share memories with each other, resolve childhood traumas; from 27th Aug they are sharing them with children, students, families and older people through small events. They are learning new skills:using digital technology, speaking/writing for the public, recording their stories. Several are disabled and only leave home for our meetings, all leave the house more frequently than before, they feel they are part of their community and contributing to its recorded heritage.

How does your charity/project support the local community?

It brings together the generations to demonstrate how war affects ordinary people's lives. It involves an increasing number of elderly people in Derbyshire, Lancashire and Cheshire, who now have a stake in their community and how its history is recorded. Their confidence has increased, many previously only left their homes to attend medical appointments. Their self worth is increasing, they are learning new skills and they have so much more to offer their communities. Our funds expire Dec 2011.

What do you plan to use the CommunityForce award for?

£6,000 would enable us to continue & expand our group for at least 3 years. The evacuees have limited incomes, and funding would cover the cost of hiring accessible meeting venues for the elderly and mobility impaired, refreshments and travel (including taxis); stationery, postage, computer consumables for our events activities, and the costs involved in document copying when we visit local wartime archives to find documents relating to their evacuation. They would love to create a short film!